At the
London Conference, the question of which defendants to try was not much discussed. The British delegation had suggested a list of roughly a dozen names compiled by the
British Foreign Office in 1944. Only one general—
Wilhelm Keitel—was listed, while the rest were members of the
Nazi Party. Nevertheless, the list aroused controversy in the British government, with
Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden arguing that military "professionals who are
merely carrying out the régime's orders" could not be considered criminals. In contrast, deputy Prime Minister
Clement Attlee argued that the military leadership as well as industrialists needed to face judgement for their actions in enabling Nazi crimes. The American prosecution supported a longer list. Added to haphazardly, this list was the basis of those to be prosecuted at Nuremberg. Some of the most prominent Nazis—
Adolf Hitler,
Heinrich Himmler, and
Joseph Goebbels—had died by suicide and therefore could not be tried. The French prosecution added
Konstantin von Neurath, former governor of the
Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Of the Soviet suggestions, only admiral
Erich Raeder and propagandist
Hans Fritzsche—a stand-in for Goebbels—were accepted; the others—including general
Willi Moser and SS officer
Friedrich Jeckeln, a major perpetrator of the Holocaust in the Baltics, were to be considered for a future trial. Although the list of defendants was finalized on 29 August, as late as October, chief United States prosecutor Robert Jackson demanded the addition of new names, proposing the addition of
Hermann Schmitz, an
IG Farben executive,
Karl Wolff and other high-ranking SS officers, as well as generals
Walther von Brauchitsch,
Franz Halder, and the Luftwaffe's
Erhard Milch. The other prosecutors refused to consider the last minute changes. Of the 24 men indicted,
Martin Bormann was
tried in absentia, as the Allies were unaware of his death; Krupp was too ill to stand trial; and
Robert Ley had died by suicide a month before the start of the trials. The American, French, and Soviet prosecutors asked to substitute
Alfried Krupp for his father, but the judges rejected this. Initially, the Americans had planned to try fourteen organizations and their leaders, but this was narrowed to six: the
Reich Cabinet, the Leadership Corps of the
Nazi Party, the
Gestapo, the
SA, the
SS and the
SD, and the
General Staff and
High Command of the
German military (Wehrmacht). The aim was to have these organizations declared criminal, so that their members could be tried expeditiously for membership in a criminal organization. Senior American officials believed that convicting organizations was a good way of showing that not just the top German leaders were responsible for crimes, without condemning the entire German people. ==Summary table==